Soul Wars

by Josh Reynolds

  She shuddered slightly, and Pharus saw that the weak spirits were clutching at her arms and pulling at her hair. He could hear their voices clearly now - high, thin accusations and curses. She floated back to the slaughter, muttering to the gibbering spirits in resigned tones. He watched her go and felt a flicker of something - unease? Sympathy?

  ‘Do not waste your sorrow upon her, my lord. Innocent blood stains her hands, and her crimes fill volumes in the Libraries of Mourning.’

  Pharus turned. The spectre behind him was tall and clad in black burial robes. He wore a sword on his waist, its sheath tattered and the bare blade etched with dolorous sigils. His face was hidden behind an iron death-mask, such as those worn by the ancient folk of the Ghurdish Hills. The mask was a beast’s head, complete with tusks and curling horns.

  A suit of shattered armour hung from his starveling frame, and in one pale hand he clutched a staff, topped by an ancient lantern. Within the lantern, a shrivelled hand sat, each of its fingers topped by an eerie, green flame. The light of the creature’s lantern was… warm. Comforting almost. Part of him longed to bask in it.

  ‘Omphalo Dohl,’ Pharus said. ‘Come to chastise me as well?’ Dohl was another servant, gifted to him by Arkhan.

  ‘Not so, my lord. Never. I am but a humble shepherd of broken souls.’ Dohl’s voice was reminiscent of a funerary bell. Each word was like a portent of doom

  The nighthaunt drifted closer, and the light from his lantern washed across Pharus. The gnawing hunger and cold that had begun to build in him faded momentarily, and he sighed. ‘That light - it reminds me of something else. I think. I think I used to carry such a light, once.’

  He looked around. The battle - if it could be called that - was all but over. Deadwalkers crouched over unmoving forms, tearing mindlessly at the cooling flesh. Deathrattle stood silent and unmoving, awaiting commands. And the nighthaunts flocked like carrion birds to the high tiers of the fortress-wagons, hunting any who might still be hiding.

  Dohl drifted closer. His eyes were black behind his mask. As pitiless as the void. But not malignant. Not evil. Merely. empty. ‘It was taken from you, along with all that you were or could have been. You were denuded of your power and strength, and cast down by an uncaring god. Gaze into my light, if you would see the truth.’

  Pharus looked away. ‘I know the truth. Why would a god lie?’

  ‘What is a lie but the shadow of a truth?’ Dohl pulled his staff back, so that the light faded. Pharus grimaced. The hunger was back and worse than before. It clawed at his non-existent insides, and he felt ravenous. Not for meat or drink but for something else. He wanted to lash out. To tear open living flesh and draw out the screaming soul within.

  ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘No. No, I do not want that.’

  But he did. That need pulsed in him, loud and insistent. What right had the living to the pleasures now denied him? What right had they to the sun, to the breeze, to the touch of a loved one? Or even something so simple as the taste of an apple? Was it not just, then, to take such unearned and unappreciated privileges from them?

  As if reading his thoughts, Dohl said, ‘In death’s shadow, all men are equal, in misery and reward. For the Undying King bestows blessings as well as curses. But only upon those who acknowledge his

  Phams closed his eyes. But even then, he could see the light of Dohl’s lantern. It was inescapable. ‘He gave me my form,’ he said softly. ‘Remade me from nothing.’

  He freed you from captivity. He will give you justice.

  ‘Sigmar abandoned you,’ Dohl said. ‘Nagash saved you.’

  As he will save all that is.

  Pharus bowed his head. ‘Yes.’

  Dohl loomed close. ‘I sense your doubt, my lord. It hangs heavy over you. Look into my lantern light, and your doubt will burn away. You will see the truth, and all doubt will be lifted from you.’

  Pharus opened his eyes. He turned, ready to look, when a harsh laugh caught his attention. He whirled, and Dohl hissed in annoyance. ‘Who dares-?’

  ‘Only me, spirit. I come to confer with your master.’

  Grand Prince Yaros stood looking down at the body of the man Pharus had killed, his axe cradled in the crook of one arm. His steed stood behind him, its rotting reins held by a skeletal servant. Yaros turned to look at Pharus. ‘Your blade is barely wet, my friend.’

  Pharus waved Dohl back and sheathed his sword. ‘And yours is wet not at all.’

  Yaros nodded. ‘True. I have no interest in wanton slaughter. I am a warrior, not a butcher. As you are, I suspect.’ He patted the blade of his axe fondly. ‘I will contain my fury until we reach the walls of Glymmsforge. There, I shall drown the streets in blood.’

  ‘Nagash will be pleased.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Yaros said, in dry tones. ‘For our lord and master, Glymmsforge is but an academic quandary. It is not a city to be humbled, but a symbol of Azyr. It is to be cracked asunder and no stone left atop another. He will send armies to do this, until it is done, and then his mind will turn elsewhere, to the next quandary. For him, the spheres.’ He gestured about him ‘For us, the sand. And here we shall wage a war of liberation.’ He pounded his chest-plate with a fleshless hand. ‘Our soldiers merely wait for our call.’

  ‘Soldiers?’ Pharus asked, looking away from the wagons.

  ‘There are armies undreamt, slumbering beneath these sands. It is my honour to awaken them, in the days to come. My task, as Malendrek has his, and you have yours.’ Yaros gestured expansively with his axe. ‘In my youth, there were a thousand oases in the Zircona Desert, and around each a kingdom sprouted.’ He gave a rattling chuckle. ‘They are gone now, alas, those grand fiefdoms. But the seeds they planted - the fallen heroes and soldiers of forgotten wars - yet remain, awaiting the call of one of royal blood.’

  ‘You,’ Pharus said.

  Yaros gave a harsh laugh, like sand scraping stone. ‘I am the son of kings, am I not? Did I not lead their descendants to glory at Akakis? Did I not pull down the citadels of the Wolf-Duke? Am I not the Hero of Orthad?’

  Pharus, who could not recall ever hearing of those events, merely nodded. Yaros peered at him, witch-light flickering in the sockets of his skull. ‘I am, my friend, as surely as you must be. We Deathlords are, all of us, heroes. Even Malendrek, for all that he is a spiteful shade.’ He turned away. ‘We are heroes,’ he said again, and Pharus wondered if he too had a voice inside, whispering certainties.

  The living fear you as the prisoner fears freedom.

  ‘They fear us,’ he said, echoing the voice.

  ‘Of course they fear us, my friend. How could they not? We are lords of death.’ Yaros glanced at him ‘You stand in august company, you know. Our names are legend, in the halls of twilight. Not Malendrek’s perhaps, but mine certainly. And I am not alone.’ He pointed his axe north. ‘There, in the lands of ice and snow, the Rictus Queen rules a country of the dead. I pledged my troth to her, though she refused me.’ Yaros loosed a doleful sigh. ‘And Count Vathek, whose soul Nagash keeps locked away in an iron box. I rode beside him at the Battle of Lament. Him and a hundred others. Heroes, my friend. Heroes, all.’

  Tools, the voice whispered in Pharus’ ear. Tools put to good use.

  ‘Why did you wish to speak to me?’ Pharus said, growing tired of Yaros’ rambling. The deathrattle prince seemed easily distracted.

  Yaros laughed again. ‘Why, to take the measure of you, little spirit. To see whether there is steel in you, or only spite.’ He leaned close, almost conspiratorially. ‘Malendrek says you stink of Azyr. And I can smell it on you.’ He tapped Pharus’ chest-plate with his axe. ‘There is an ember, smouldering inside you. But it grows smaller by the day. And soon it will be gone entirely, and you will be one of us.’

  Pharus drifted back, and Yaros turned. His servant sank down, and Yaros used the skeleton as a step-stool to climb into the saddle
. He hauled back on the reins, causing the fleshless horse to rear silently. ‘Be of good cheer, my friend - death is the end of strife, and your course is set,’ he called out, as he turned his steed about and galloped away to join his warriors. The skeletal servant trotted after him.

  Pharus watched him ride away, and then turned to Dohl, who hovered nearby. ‘How many wagons escaped?’

  ‘Three, my lord. Should we pursue?’

  ‘In time,’ he said distantly. There was no escape. No matter how far they went, or where they hid, they would all come to Nagash, in time.

  It is inevitable. You are inevitable.

  He glanced down at his blade and saw again the hint of a skull, leering at him from within its depths.

  The living are weak. They know fear and doubt. It is a burden on them.

  ‘Life is a burden,’ Pharus said.

  Life is a cage. In death are all slaves freed. All are one in Nagash.

  Pharus paused. His hand fell to the hilt of his blade. He could feel the sands shivering through the hourglass there. ‘And Nagash is all,’ he said finally.

  Chapter fourteen

  Inviolate

  FREE CITY OF GLYMMSFORGE

  ‘Welcome to the Gloaming,’ Lord-Veritant Achillus said.

  Balthas looked around, unimpressed. His surroundings put him in mind of a honeycomb, perforated by courtyards and blind alleys. He saw wretched structures with broken windows patched over with rag-and-board, dirt-smeared walls and rotting foundations. A canopy of crude bridges and gantries stretched above the street, from one side to the other. The sounds of singing, fighting, squabbling and screaming echoed all about him ‘It’s a slum,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And a large one.’ The lord-veritant stopped, as something crashed down on the street ahead. Balthas glanced up and saw a head vanish inside an open window. Shouts and curses echoed down from other windows, and rooftops. The city was in uproar. Not fully-fledged panic, yet. But tensions were high. The Glymmsmen were stretched thin, handling the influx of new people to the city, all of whom brought with them tales of the dead.

  In the wake of the cataclysm, it was too much. Flagellants roamed the streets, howling prayers. The citizens, inured to siege mentality, resignedly readied themselves for another assault. But this was different, and they knew it - for the enemy was already here.

  More things - bricks - crashed down. People ran along the rooftops, shouting warnings. Balthas glanced back at the cohorts of Sequitors and Castigators following in his wake. They had orders to ignore such provocation, where possible.

  ‘They seem unhappy with our presence,’ Mara said. The Sequitor-Prime looked around, her gaze sharp behind her war-mask. She was not used to this, Balthas knew. The enemy was normally in front of them and clearly defined.

  ‘It is rare that we bring glad tidings,’ Achillus said. He raised his staff, and the lantern atop it flashed. ‘Especially to the Gloaming.’ As the light washed across the nearby storefronts and walkways, the catcallers above fell silent. ‘But they know me, here. And they know not to cross me.’

  ‘How many times have you had to do this?’ Balthas asked.

  Achillus shrugged. ‘Enough to know that it is never simple.’ He paused. ‘Shyish is not simple. The dead are too close, here. Their whispers are shouts, and some among the living are too willing to

  ‘This is not the same thing. Deadwalkers are more akin to a pox than anything else.’

  ‘I know what deadwalkers are, lord-arcanum,’ Achillus said bluntly. ‘I have fought them since the first stones of Glymmsforge were set.’ The light from his lantern drove back the shadows and revealed huddled beggars in alleyways and cats slinking through gutters. Pigeons burst into flight, startled by the radiance. And something else - a warmer glow, like a current of hot air, tinged with amethyst. ‘This way.’

  ‘You have the trail?’ Balthas asked, following the lord-veritant down the street. They’d come into the Gloaming seeking several individuals who’d escaped a riot elsewhere in the city. A deadwalker had been involved - a trader from Gravewild, Balthas had been told. The creature had bitten several others, before it had been put down. Not all of the injured had been caught before they slipped away.

  Achillus didn’t reply. Balthas frowned in annoyance. He did not require companionability in an ally, but Achillus seemed disinclined to give him the respect his position warranted. He wondered if this were some jest of Knossus’, to assign him so surly a liaison. His Sacrosanct Chamber, along with Knossus’, was scattered across the city, investigating a thousand and one problematic incidents.

  The dead no longer rested easy in Glymmsforge, and the fear in the streets grew stronger hour by hour. Deadwalkers haunted the slums, as ghostly shapes loped along isolated streets. A colony of great bats had descended upon a private park, in the inner ring of the city, and drained the life from the scions of a noble family. Undead street curs hunted cats in the back alleys, and phantom fires danced across the rooftops.

  But so far, the city held. Balthas had to admit, if grudgingly, that this was mostly due to Knossus’ efforts. The other lord-arcanum was everywhere, fighting to hold together the fragile calm. His warriors walked the streets alongside the city’s defenders, and carried hope with them. It wouldn’t last, but for the moment, Glymmsforge stood inviolate.

  ‘There,’ Achillus said, loudly.

  Balthas looked up. The tenement was a tottering pile of wood and stone with a slanted roof and haphazardly arranged chimneys. Rickety steps climbed up the sides, and crude gantries of wood and rope connected the building to those on either side, as well as one directly across the street. Washing lines stretched beneath these paths, and sodden clothes hung dripping from the highest. The doors and windows were seemingly boarded over from the inside, as if the inhabitants were afraid of someone getting in.

  There was a smell on the air - subtle and foul. To Balthas’ storm-sight, the structure was bathed in a dark, amethyst radiance. Soulfire flickered somewhere inside. ‘Yes,’ he said. The magics he sensed were savage things - wilder than they should have been, and more potent. It was as if the winds of magic had grown stronger following the necroquake. But that was a problem for another time.

  He turned to his Sequitors. ‘Mara, your cohort will enter the building with us.’ Mara nodded and turned, barking orders to her Sequitors. Balthas glanced at the Castigator-Prime. ‘Quintus, take your warriors and block off the surrounding streets. Nothing gets out, unless I say otherwise.’

  ‘As you will it, my lord,’ Quintus said, and genuflected. The Castigator-Prime gestured and his cohort scattered, two warriors to each street and side-passage. Balthas nodded in satisfaction and looked at Achillus.

  ‘You are certain of this, brother?’

  ‘I am’ Achillus studied the doorway. ‘Several of the injured fled the attack. They might turn, if they

  haven’t already. If the curse spreads, this city will face a war on two fronts. The deadwalkers will scatter, and every new death will only feed their number.’

  ‘And if they are not gripped by this curse?’

  Achillus said nothing. Balthas looked at the building. ‘A graceless structure,’ he said.

  ‘Function over form,’ Achillus said. He started forwards. Balthas fell into step with him Mara and her warriors followed them, the clank of their armour loud in the quiet. Achillus drew his blade and shattered the boards blocking the doorway. A thick stink washed out over them

  Crossbow bolts splintered on Achillus’ chest-plate. He looked down, and then up. ‘That was foolish,’ he said solemnly. Then, he was through the doorway, blade singing out. Balthas followed him, staff held low. He saw Achillus cleave a mortal in two, and another standing at the top of a set of stairs, hastily reloading his crossbow. The man was a bravo, clad in rattletrap gear and bearing the scars of a life lived on the wrong side of Azyr’s law. Balthas saw the story of h
im at a single glance and chose a fitting end.

  He gestured, drawing the skeins of aether tight, and the second crossbowman screamed as his form stiffened and became stone. The newly made statue rocked slightly and then toppled from the top of the steps to crash into the floor below. Achillus glanced at him and nodded. ‘Well done.’

  ‘It lacked subtlety,’ Balthas said. He looked around. Cheap lanterns hung from the walls. The bottom floor of the structure had been broken open, revealing the cellars below. Planks of wood crossed the hole like makeshift bridges. From below, he heard a dull moaning, muffled by the confines of the cellars.

  Sequitors pounded past him, assuming defensive positions. He stepped to the edge of the hole and peered down. Deadwalkers shuffled aimlessly in the great pit below. Some scratched at the walls, while others gnawed on their own flesh. Many were old things, dried to sticks and covered in decades of filth. Others were fresh - their wounds only hours old, if that. ‘What is this?’ he said.

  ‘A plague pit,’ a voice said, from above. ‘Or it was.’

  A man clad in thin, patched robes, stepped onto the landing above, accompanied by several warriors who had the look of sellswords. They looked distinctly unhappy about the situation, unlike their employer. He had a thin, haunted look, and the ghost of a smile passed over his face. ‘I spent months, digging through records and reports, until I found it. You burned it, once. I suspect it looks different now. But they were still here, buried in the dark. Truly, the dead are persistent.’

  Achillus glanced at Balthas. ‘I thought this place looked familiar.’

  Balthas shook his head. ‘Not all of those corpses are old.’ The man was mad. Worse, his soul was a tattered sack, leaking a sickening amethyst light. Balthas had fought sorcerers steeped in death-magic before, and began to draw strands of aether tight, readying himself.